Page 19 of Moody Mountain Man
I lose it, grinding into her until we both come again, slower, sweeter, her tight heat pulling me under.
After, I stay buried in her, holding her on the table, her legs locked around me. My hands stroke her hair, her sides, her belly. I kiss every inch I can reach.
“You okay?” I whisper.
She smiles against my lips. “Better than okay.”
I kiss her belly, linger there, whisper against her skin. “Daddy loves you, little one. More than anything.”
Then I look up at Annie, my chest tearing wide open. “And I love you most of all.”
Her tears spill, soft and shining. “Forever?”
“Forever,” I vow, and I mean it with every piece of me.
Later, upstairs on the couch with Dottie’s quilt thrown over us, Annie curls against me, her hand over mine where it rests on her belly. I watch her breathe, feel our baby shift under my palm.
My mind drifts—our wedding last spring, the bakery full of flowers and friends, Dottie crying louder than Annie. The way Reid clapped me on the shoulder like he’d been waiting his whole damn life for me to get it together. Juniper handed Annie a pot of thyme with tears in her eyes. Sawyer grunting a toast that was really a benediction.
The whole damn town is rooting for us.
And now this. My wife. Our baby. Our life.
I never thought I’d get here. I never thought I’d deserve it. But it’s mine. She’s mine.
She stirs, half-asleep, murmurs, “Your mine.”
I kiss her hair, tighten my arm around her. “Always.”
Forever.
Epilogue Two - Annie - Five Years Later
Fall in Pine Hollow wraps around you like a quilt. Crisp mountain air laced with woodsmoke and cider. Lanterns strung across the square, their glow warm against the early dark. Music spilling from the stage at the edge of the festival.
And here we are in the middle of it—me, Cal, and the family we built out of love.
Jack tugs at my hand, practically vibrating. At five, he’s all long legs and endless questions, hair messy like his daddy’s, eyes sparkling like mine. “Come on, Mama, the pumpkins will be gone!”
“Pumpkins don’t have legs,” I tease, squeezing his hand. “They’ll wait.”
“Reid’s boy’s got a wheelbarrow,” Cal mutters behind me, voice low and gravelly. He’s carrying a diaper bag and two caramel apples like it’s nothing. “Jack might be right.”
I glance back at him and swat his chest. He grins that crooked grin that still wrecks me after all these years. My moody mountain man—husband, father, protector, pain in the ass. Mine.
On my hip, Molly, two years old and sugar-sweet trouble, presses sticky lips to my neck. She smells like cider donuts and caramel. Her pigtails are lopsided, cheeks pink. “Mine,” she says, patting my chest like she owns me.
Cal leans in, kissing her temple. “She’s not wrong.”
She obviously takes after her father.
At the pumpkin patch, Jack makes a beeline for the biggest pumpkin he can find, nearly toppling himself over trying to lift it. Cal crouches beside him, steadying the stem, voice low and patient.
“It’s not about the biggest. You want solid with no soft spots. Strong enough to carve, strong enough to last.”
Jack frowns, considering. Then he grins, gap-toothed. “Like you?”
Cal looks up at me, and in his eyes I see it all—the man he was, the man he’s become. His jaw works before he says, steady, “Exactly like me.”
